Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

As pro-choice activists, we are commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1973 landmark decision, Roe vs. Wade. As future physicians, we know that for many women who are seeking safe, legal abortions today, the promise of Roe rings hollow.

There's an interesting article in this week's New York Review of Books, written by Garry Wills about Jimmy Carter's new book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, that offers some quite sharp insights on the so-called "pro-life" movement -- something I consider only slightly short of remarkable, given that this is coming from a patriarchal moralist and a paternalistic liberal journalist, two men who've not demonstrated much insight when it comes to women's rights.

In his book, Wills writes, Carter lays into the fundamentalist authoritarianism that's sweeping across the religious landscape, and which took over the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000.

Such attitudes are far from the ones recommended by Jesus in the gospels as Carter has studied and taught them through the decades, and their proponents have brought similar attitudes into the political world, where a matching political fundamentalism has taken over much of the electoral process. Such dictatorial attitudes defeat the stated goals of the fundamentalists themselves. On abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a "pro-life" dogmatism defeats human life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy "brought about by a combination of human errors." But the "pro-life" forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.

Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the "pro-life" movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:

Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany.... It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs.

The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can be seen where the law forbids abortion:

In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].

Don't tell the zealots. They don't want to hear it. More importantly, they don't want you to hear it.

A New York Times article that came out after Carter's book appeared further confirms what he is saying: "Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions."[*] This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as the only form of contraceptionâ€”demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of that kind of program.

By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 1990s. Yet the ironically named "pro-life" movement would return the United States to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the fundamentalists try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign aid to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive knowledge. They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research. With friends like these, "life" is in thrall to death. Carter finds these results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).

In other words, the so-called "anti-abortion movement" in the United States wants authoritarian political policies that emulate policies in countries where the unsafe abortion rates are highest in the world.

"Pro-life"? More like a Culture of Death. A Culture of Death that promotes the un-checked proliferation of military weapons into the hands of criminals and terrorists....

The pro-life forces have no problem with a gun industry and capital punishment legislation that are, in fact, provably pro-death. Carter, a lifelong hunter, does not want to outlaw guns and he knows that Americans would never do that. But timorous politicians, cowering before the NRA, defeat even the most sensible limitations on weapons useful neither for hunting nor for personal self-defense (AK-47s, AR-15s, Uzis), even though, as Carter shows, more than 1,100 police chiefs and sheriffs told Congress that these weapons are obstacles to law enforcement. The NRA opposed background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists and illegals, and then insisted that background checks, if they were imposed, had to be destroyed within twenty-four hours. The result of such pro-death measures, Carter writes, is grimly evident: "American children are sixteen times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, eleven times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from firearms accidents." Where are the friends of the fetus when children are dying in such numbers?

A Culture of Death that fights against the power of the people against the super-rich multi-national corporations....

It is the gap between rich and poor in the world that presents the main threat to our future, yet American policies increase that gap, at home and abroad. We give proportionally less money in foreign aid than do other developed countries, and our ability to give is being decreased by our growing deficit, incurred to reward our own wealthy families with disproportionate tax cuts. Carter points out that much of the aid announced or authorized never reaches its targets. This reflects a general smugness about America's privileged position. We are dismissive of other countries' concern with the world environment, with nuclear containment, and with international law.

A Culture of Death that proudly crows its willingness to use torture and bribery and nuclear weapons to push "national interests"....

We have, for example, declared our right to first use of nuclear weapons. We have used aid money to bribe people against holding us accountable to international law. We have run secret detention centers where hundreds of people are held without formal charges or legal representation. We have rewarded with high office men who, like Alberto Gonzales, say that the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners are "obsolete" or even "quaint," or who, like John Bolton, say that it is "a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so."

The result, as Carter writes, has been to turn a vast fund of international good will accruing to us after September 11 into fear of and contempt for America unparalleled in modern times.

In other words, it's all of a piece -- the right's contempt for human life, which for American citizens is so cynically packaged by as a "Culture of Life," promotes death in America and worldwide. And what is becoming increasingly clear is that the right's bottom line is that they are all for promoting governmental and corporate power at the expense of human rights and human lives.

How can a loving religion or a just state support such a culture of death? Only a self-righteous and punitive fundamentalism, not an ethos of the gospels, can explain this.

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - An abortion-rights supporter says she's upset that the final report of the South Dakota Abortion Task Force was altered from the version approved at a Dec. 9 meeting.

Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood, said the changes were made without the knowledge of abortion-rights advocates on the panel. Looby said she thinks the action was designed to protect the state against a potential libel suit.

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com.

In January 2006 the Society for Adolescent Medicine, a multidisciplinary organization of professionals committed to improving the physical and psychosocial health and well-being of adolescents, released a review critiquing federally-funded abstinence only until marriage programs in the Journal of Adolescent Medicine.

Brad Ellsworth likes to hunt, opposes abortion and says he'll put his "family values up against anybody." He may be the Democrats' new dream candidate.

The 47-year-old Ellsworth, a county sheriff in Indiana, is one of a number of Democrats running for the U.S. Congress next year whose positions on social issues deviate from the national party's. His candidacy follows a presidential election the Democrats lost in part because they failed to win over "values voters," according to polls and party strategists.

The recruitment of Ellsworth and candidates with similar views is "the party making a decision to be more inclusive," said Elaine Kamarck, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton and to Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. "It is the lesson of 2004."

"There are some in the national Democratic leadership who think perhaps choice has become too much of a litmus test in the party, and it hurts them," [congressional analyst Jennifer] Duffy said.

So what's the answer? A new litmus test: rather than appeal to the Democratic base, you pander to the acidic views of the radical right. In other words: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Other Democratic recruits for Congress who sound more like traditional Republicans on social issues include former Minnesota Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg, who is anti-abortion, and former college and professional football player Heath Shuler, an avid hunter from North Carolina who opposes abortion and gun controls.

In Pennsylvania, U.S. Senate candidate and state Treasurer Bob Casey, who opposes abortion rights, led abortion foe Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican, by 12 percentage points in a Quinnipiac poll of 1,447 voters last month.

One can only hope that primaries defeat these faux-Democrats.

"This is a much larger field than it's been in the past." Bill Burton, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said of the anti-abortion and pro-gun candidates. "We have folks in that group who aren't necessarily with the national party on every single issue but do reflect the makeup of the congressional district."

Apparently women's constitutional rights aren't important to the Democratic Party any more.

Recruiting anti-abortion and pro-gun candidates is part of a broader Democratic effort to recast the party's image on social issues. Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, said she used to have a hard time getting the Democratic National Committee to return phone calls.

Then in April, the group was allowed to use the committee's headquarters to unveil a plan to reduce the U.S. abortion rate. "It's a big step," Day said.

The only problem with this is that people against women's reproductive rights are ill-equipped to actually reduce the number of aborted pregnancies. Criminalizing it just drives it underground.

But don't confuse them with facts -- their minds are made up. We need to put doctors and women in prison. Now there's some enlightened social policy!

Perhaps the most bizarre example of tortured logic comes from the DCCC itself:

"It's Democrats being more on the offensive rather than the defensive when it comes to values issues," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council.

Former President Clinton held that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare," an appeal to voters uncomfortable with abortion that didn't compromise his support for Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a woman's right to abortion.

Democrats have strayed from that formula and it has hurt them, Wittmann said. In the 2004 presidential election, more voters -- 22 percent -- said "moral values" were the most important issue than said the economy and terrorism, according to CNN exit polls.

Traditional Democratic values are moral values. The people who voted for Kerry were voting about morality.

This just shows how little conviction of any values at all is held by the Democratic Party. Selling out women to the government as breeder property of the State is not morality, it's not "on the offensive" -- it's pandering.

The problem was further documented in an August memo by Democracy Corps, a Democratic research organization. Focus groups found that most voters considered Democrats to be "liberal" on issues of morality, according to the memo. Some voters even used the words "immoral" or "morally bankrupt" to describe Democrats.

Those are the words I use to describe the radical right and the so-called "pro-life" movement. Apparently they have louder voices, though, so now they've succeeded in defining morality, and the Democratic Party thinks it can simply pander to unprogressive views and score wins.

Particularly among non-college voters, "cultural issues not only superseded other priorities" such as Iraq and the economy, "they served as a proxy for many voters" on those issues, the memo said.

"It's almost as if Democrats forgot how to be successful on these issues and are trying to relearn some of the approaches Bill Clinton took in 1992 that were so successful," Wittmann said.

No, what they're trying to do is be more Republican, rather than work to define their own values.

No wonder the Democratic Party has not come up with its own Contract With America. Maybe they're afraid it will look too much like the Republicans' and people will notice.

What this proves is that the Democrats either take their traditional constituents for granted, or would rather have right-wing constituents and to hell with progressives. The Democratic Party is no longer the party that defends women's rights, but rather defends a vision of Handmaid America.